1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic head assembly formed by assembling a magnetic head slider with a magnetoresistive effect (MR) read head element and a support such as a suspension, to a magnetic disk drive apparatus with a magnetic head assembly, and to a manufacturing method of a magnetic head assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known in general that linearity in wave shape of an MR output from an MR read head element will extremely deteriorate when a contractive stress in a track-width direction is applied to the MR read head element.
However, according to the investigation of the inventors of this application, it has been found that although the contractive stress in the track-width direction certainly deteriorates the linearity of the output wave shape, a tensile stress in the track-width direction never deteriorates the output wave shape linearity. Rather, application of such tensile stress in the track-width direction to the MR read head element can improve its output wave shape linearity even if it had already been deteriorated.
Japanese patent publication No. 05-036022A discloses a technique to improve output characteristics of a thin-film magnetic head with a single inductive head element served to perform both read and write operations by applying a stress thereto. The thin-film magnetic head has piezo-electric element layers driven to provide a tensile stress in the track-width direction to its magnetic layer so as to obtain a stable anisotropic performance with a magnetization easy axis along the track-width direction.
According to such known technique, it is possible to form a stable magnetic domain shape with negative magnetostriction in a track region and therefore a normal wave shape read signal with no wiggle noise can be provided. However, this technique is for the inductive read head element but not applicable to the MR read head element. Also, because it is necessary to provide piezo-electric element layers and their drive electrodes in the thin-film magnetic head, not only the structure becomes complicated but also its manufacturing process becomes complicated resulting to increase the manufacturing cost.